Joe Biden’s call to fund the Palestinian Authority (PA) with U.S. taxpayer dollars, including the organization’s subsidies for Islamic terrorist murderers and their families, is “morally repugnant,” said Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values and founder of the Jewish outreach organization Project Genesis.
Menken joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak to discuss Biden’s stated position on Israel and the Palestinians.
Last week, Biden called for the restoration of U.S. foreign aid to the PA. Breitbart News reported:
Former Vice President Joe Biden promised Tuesday to reverse several measures taken by President Donald Trump against the Palestinian Authority due in part to its support for terrorism and rejection of negotiations.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Biden said: “I will reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to re-open the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”
Halting U.S. funding of the PA resulted from a bipartisan resolution in Congress, noted Menken. “Once they found out that that the Palestinian Authority was running a pay-to-slay program, [Congress] said U.S. taxpayer money should not be used to implicate the U.S. taxpayer in a murder-for-hire program that is unequal throughout the world.”
LISTEN:
Pollak said, “It’s strange to arrive at this juncture, where it seems there’s no longer a bipartisan consensus on something as simple as American taxpayer dollars not being used to fund Palestinian terrorism.”
Menken concurred, “That’s exactly what was so troubling about what [Joe Biden] had to say. It’s not as if the Trump administration said, ‘We will not give money to the Palestinian Authority.’ They will, it’s just that there is now a law in place called the Taylor Force Act and that is because U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force was murdered by a terrorist, and the Palestinian Authority continues to pay the family of that terrorist — to show what? Honor and respect for murderers?”
Menken continued, “Mahmoud Abbas has said these so-called freedom fighters — who are actually mass murderers — are the best their society has to offer, and I think it’s a horrible thing to say about the people he’s supposed to represent.”
“All [the PA] has to do to get the funding is to stop funding terrorism [and] stop providing financial rewards to the families of those who commit murder,” added Menken.
The “leftist squad” has a “huge influence” over Joe Biden’s campaign and policies, estimated Menken, referring to Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
“I don’t know if [the Taylor Force Act] could pass in this Congress because we’ve seen a horrible inversion going on,” Menken stated, highlighting the left’s racial and ethnic politics. “Along comes a black Muslim refugee woman, and she says the same things that David Duke says. She gets exactly the same criticism, but she says, ‘Oh, it’s because I’m a black Muslim refugee woman.’ Now, that’s idiocy, but because she’s saying it, the Congressional Black Caucus lines up behind her and others on the left line up behind her.”
Menken concluded, “That’s what’s pulling the [Democrats] to the left, and we look at the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Anybody who believes that a Jew cannot be an antisemite knows nothing of Jewish history and the incredible damage done by Jews who work against our interests.”
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has sent over $4 billion in direct assistance to the Palestinians — with billions more transferred via intermediaries such as the United Nations (U.N.). The Palestinians are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.
Breitbart News Sunday broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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